Survey: Most consumers will shop online on these two holiday shopping days

The upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday shopping days hold a lot of promise for e-commerce retailers.

Seventy-one percent of U.S. respondents plan to shop online this Black Friday (Nov. 24) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 27), according to a survey of consumers across the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Netherlands from performance marketing platform Wunderkind. 

Forty percent of U.S. respondents plan to spend more on Black Friday than they did on Amazon Prime Day, and 31% of U.S. respondents plan to spend more on Cyber Monday. The 2022 edition of Prime Day broke records with an estimated $11.9 billion in total sales.

Nearly seven in 10 U.S. respondents also said emails from brands encourage them to take advantage of Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, while 62.8% like to be reminded of brands’ Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals via email. Wunderkind also expects Cyber Week (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) U.S. online sales to grow by 12% year-over-year.

The report also reveals that shoppers are shifting their focus to economic and societal factors, with the following mattering the most to U.S. respondents in making a purchase decision this Black Friday/Cyber Monday:

The survey also revealed several interesting findings across all respondents:

• Close to half (48.8%) of respondents plan to take advantage of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options and 46.2% will be comparing prices/investigating deals more this year than last year.
• Respondents said they will rely heavily on emails from their favorite brands to learn about general sales (79.6%), unique price drops (74.8%), loyalty programs (76.2%), coupon codes (73.4%) and reminders of items in their carts (77.8%). Other influences on final gifting decisions cited by respondents include customer reviews, word of mouth, gift guides and Instagram ads as sources.
• Popular gift categories will include (63.2%), gift cards (52.6%), video games (43.4%), and other tech goods (42.8%) (such as phones, tablets, headphones/earphones, laptops, monitors, etc.).
• More than one in three respondents are taking brands’ efforts in areas such as sustainability (42.8%), fair wages (38%), and diversity/inclusion (36.4%) into consideration when making holiday purchases.

Is Black Friday losing luster with some shoppers?
A recent survey from shopping rewards app Shopkick offers a less optimistic view of Black Friday. Only 43% of U.S. consumers surveyed by Shopkick say they are planning to shop on Black Friday this year (an 18% decrease from 2021), and 27% plan to shop on Cyber Monday (a 40% year-over-year decrease).

However, the Shopkick data indicates younger generations are more likely to take advantage of deal days, with 56% of Gen Z respondents and 50% of millennial respondents planning to shop on Black Friday, compared to 44% of Gen X and baby boomers, and 36% of the Silent Generation.

“Consumers have become smarter about how they spend their money, which has changed the way they shop and the criteria that leads them to commit to a particular product or retailer,” said Richard Jones, chief revenue officer at Wunderkind. “As brands prepare for the most important revenue-generating season of the year, they must emphasize holiday deals, discounts, low prices, and budget-friendliness now. If products are unavailable or misaligned with consumers’ budgets, even the most loyal shoppers will look elsewhere.”